UPDATE 2-EU lawmakers slam Turkish reform slowdown http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nDEB464407&imageid=&cap=&from=business
Mon Sep 4, 2006
(Updates with result of vote, changes dateline to Strasbourg)
By Darren Ennis
STRASBOURG, France, Sept 4 (Reuters) - European Union lawmakers approved a highly critical report on Monday accusing Turkey of dragging its heels on reforms, marking the start of looming crisis between the EU and Ankara over its accession bid.
The EU assembly's foreign affairs committee voted through a paper which slammed Turkey for not living up to the commitments it gave when it received the green light last October to start talks on joining the bloc.
"The European parliament ... regrets the slowing down of the reform process," the report said, pointing to what it called "persistent shortcomings" in a range of areas.
The lawmakers said Turkey had shown "insufficient progress" in the areas of freedom of expression, religious and minority rights, women's rights and law enforcement since EU leaders agreed to start accession talks 11 months ago. The report urged Ankara to recognise Cyprus and urged it to "take concrete steps for the normalization of bilateral relations with the Republic as soon as possible".
Experts fear the niggling dispute over Cyprus and mutual public disenchantment could lead at worst to a breakdown in accession talks with the strategic, Muslim candidate country. But the report stopped short of mentioning that scenario.
"We are not saying that we are not still committed to the talks or that we do not want Turkey to join the EU," said Dutch conservative Camiel Eurlings, who scripted the report.
"But we are sending a clear signal to Turkey that it must move quickly with its reforms," he told the committee.
However the report's demand that, as a precondition of membership, Ankara acknowledge that Ottoman Turkey committed genocide against Armenians in World War One -- a suggestion it strongly rejects -- will raise tensions further.
Any country wishing to join the 25-member bloc requires the approval of both the European parliament and the agreement of all member states.
ELECTION PRESSURE
The report will go before a full parliament sitting at the end of the month and is likely to be raised when chief Turkish EU negotiator Ali Babacan visits Brussels from Wednesday.
Babacan will try to reassure EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn and other EU officials that Turkey is committed to pressing ahead with economic and political reform despite national elections due next year.
The European parliament has never sought to veto any past accession, but it has been effective in pressuring EU hopefuls to speed up reforms in previous enlargement rounds.
However the conservative EPP-ED, the assembly's largest political group, still favours "privileged partnership" with Turkey rather than full membership.
The report censures insufficient progress on freedom of expression and raises concerns over the lot of religious minorities, corruption, and violence against women.
It also criticised the unusually high threshold for parliamentary representation, under which a party must score 10 percent nationwide, making it hard for Kurdish groups to win seats in areas where they have a majority. The Commission is due to issue its regular progress report on Oct. 24. Rehn has urged Ankara to show tangible improvements in human rights legislation by then, not least to offset a likely negative finding on its behaviour towards Cyprus.
The Commission's report will assess whether Ankara has met an obligation to open ports to ships from Cyprus, which Turkey does not recognise, under a protocol signed last year extending its EU customs union to the bloc's 10 new member states.
If it has not complied, an EU summit in December is likely to put at least part of the accession talks on hold.
(Additional reporting by Hatice Aydogdu in Ankara, Osman Senkul and Paul de Bendern in Istanbul and Paul Taylor in Brussels)
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